How Komi Group’s Andrew Trotman Is Scaling the Creator Economy

This week on TellyCast, Justin Crosby sits down with Andrew Trotman, CEO and founder of Komi Group, to explore how one of the UK’s most forward-thinking creator businesses is reshaping the digital content landscape. From building data-driven social brands to launching creator-led businesses, Andrew shares how Komi Group went from a horse racing tipster account to a global social video powerhouse producing 4.5 billion views a month.

We dive into the realities of creator burnout, why Facebook might be poised for a comeback, and how Andrew is backing creators with rapid payments, platform diversification strategies, and mental health support. With 40+ owned brands, a proprietary data stack, and a growing talent division, this is a masterclass in the modern creator economy from someone who’s building it from the inside.

Recorded in London and produced by Spirit Studios.

Listen now to discover how the digital-first game is changing — and how to win it.

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Transcript

Justin Crosby: Hi, I'm Justin Crosby and welcome to this week's TellyCast. On this week's show, we are diving into the creator economy with someone right at the sharp end of the business. Andrew Trotman is the CEO and founder of Komi Group, one of the most interesting companies helping social video creators scale their businesses and build brands that last from brand deals and merch to product launches and creator led businesses.

Justin Crosby: Andrew's got a front row seat to what's really working in social video right now. We're talking about. How to turn creators into million pound brands. How to manage the pressure that comes with life in the social spotlight and where the biggest opportunities lie in the fast evolving digital landscape.

Justin Crosby: It's all coming up on TellyCast, the podcast for TV and digital content professionals. Hey Andrew, how you doing? 

Andrew Trotman: Hi there, Justin. Nice to meet you. 

Justin Crosby: Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming down from, well, your business is in Manchester, but you are, you live in Leeds, don't you? I do indeed. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Justin Crosby: Not at all. So let's, let's talk about Comy group. You founded the business. Well, yeah. Tell us when and and, and how it's evolved over ti over time. 

Andrew Trotman: Yeah. So I founded Comy in 2016. But I guess my light bulb moment for why I should do that was a couple of years previously. And I launched business in, quite randomly, it was in horse racing.

Andrew Trotman: I became the u one of the UK's most followed horse racing tipster despite knowing, knowing nothing about horse racing, really. It was the, I'm a a massive data guy and obsessed with obsessing over the data and working out how things work to find solutions. And I created a system which allowed me to beat bookmakers from horse racing.

Andrew Trotman: It was all about leveraging overpriced horses in the market betting on them and then over a, a, a long period of time being able to generate a, a, a very healthy return. And having, doing having done this for myself for a for a few years, I. The book makers started to catch on to what I was doing 

Justin Crosby: when you were walking about how the book used with sacks of 

Andrew Trotman: cash every week.

Andrew Trotman: Well, yeah. Very much so, and this was at uni, as one of my friends were looking at me thinking, why, why is that guy always in, in the, in the bookies and what's he, what's he doing online with with this, with this bookmaker thing? But I, I dunno how much detail you want me to go into that, but the, the, the general rule being that.

Andrew Trotman: If you imagine roulette and if I said to you, instead of having 50 50 odds of red black in your return, if I said, well, I'll give you five to one if, if it lands on red and and still evens on black, you'll say, well, I'll bet on red then. 'cause I know that the odds of 50 50, but I can return five to one.

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Andrew Trotman: And the idea being that if you continue to bet on that, that red over a long period of time, your margin will be, will be how you beat. The bookmakers or, or beat the, or beat the house. And even if it lands on black 20 times in a row, your 21st bet is still going to be betting on black 'cause you know that the odds are in your favor.

Andrew Trotman: So I created this system and I was doing it for myself. The bookmakers caught onto this. They're not legally allowed to ban you because you're not doing anything illegal. Yeah. But what they do is they, they, they tag you as a high risk punter high risk to their high risk, to their problem. High indeed.

Andrew Trotman: It's funny how it works. And they max bet you to one p. Essentially meaning that you cannot, you cannot place bets anymore. And is this 

Justin Crosby: one bookmaker or is 

Andrew Trotman: this the, no, this, this happened, this happened across the whole, across the whole board, over a, over a probably a 18 month period of me jumping around and, and trying to spread these bets.

Andrew Trotman: Yeah. But clearly. I could see that I had a system that was, that was good and could make money. So the logical next step was, okay, well I should sell this information to other people who can then use it and do exactly the same things as I was doing. So what I did is I set a business up. I marketed it all on Twitter at the time, now X and started to build a channel and started to build the following.

Andrew Trotman: I was really transparent with everyone. These bets I was placing to gather interest, recording everything I was doing on a day-to-day basis. And then built a, a really loyal following, again, it doesn't seem that large now, but it was about 20,000 followers. Yeah, this is probably back in probably 2012 and.

Andrew Trotman: Yeah, that was the light bulb moment I, I talked about at the start where I realized that actually leveraging a, a community of people who really care about something and really care about what you are talking about can be really, really valuable. And owning that distribution channel is incredibly powerful as well, because then you can, you can talk to other people, you can bring, bring brands into that conversation and actually.

Andrew Trotman: The, the, the community that you've grown care about you and what you're saying. This was, this was before people were talking about influencer marketing, but that's, that's definitely what it was. Mm. And I took that idea and I, I, I kept scaling up and going, okay, well if I know that Twitter has, at the time probably.

Andrew Trotman: 200 million daily active users, but I know Facebook's over there on 2 billion daily, daily active users. I need to start going to these other platforms, taking the same approach that I'm doing of building channels and, and building communities and doing this on a much larger scale. And that's where Kumi was, was was there, was born in 2016.

Justin Crosby: That's fascinating. That's the, that's the best ever origin story I've heard from a a creator business. And and so. What, what was the channel called, by the way? Is it, is it still in existence? Do you still keep it going or? 

Andrew Trotman: It is still in existence, but I still keep it under wraps that nobody knows what it was.

Andrew Trotman: Me. It's still there. The website is still there. And I, I have dreams of, of retiring somewhere down the line and going back and, and doing that because it was a. It was my, my first love, I guess you could say. Okay. So 

Justin Crosby: you, you, you started with Komi and and, and what was the idea then? Obviously you said your experience was very much around influence influencer marketing and building communities around content.

Justin Crosby: How did that translate to where Komi Group is today? So the idea was very 

Andrew Trotman: much again, okay, let's, let's take our time here. And I wanted to build. Pages and brands that people really cared about. 'cause I'd seen that those were the ones that brands wanted to be involved with. So it was a case of how, how do we, how do we come to the market?

Andrew Trotman: 'cause again, this was after some big players were, had, had large media brands both established and, and, and newer players on Facebook and on YouTube. So it was very much case of. If I, if I want this to be successful, we're going to have to look at this in a different way to other people. So we, we went about growing brand.

Andrew Trotman: It was all about heads down. We didn't really speak to anyone for a few years. And again, in, in social. And if you want to own the, the audience in the distribution channel, you have to, you have to build something that, that people really care about to have any leverage what whatsoever. So. We, we, we started to build we, we, we started with a, a channel on Facebook called, it's Gone Viral, which is now IGV.

Andrew Trotman: And we started to really dig into different niches. So we did gaming, we did animals, we did lifestyle, we did female pages, we did male pages, and it was about building them, building the voice. And building leverage with the platforms as well. 

Justin Crosby: And you, you fund, did you self-fund that? Right, right at the beginning?

Justin Crosby: Was that, that from your success of from the horse racing approach that, that basically enabled you to seed fund it, if you like? Yeah, 

Andrew Trotman: so we were I bootstrapped business up until 2022. And it was, again, I'm a, a massive believer of, I, I love building businesses and I love the idea that you can self-fund and, and the profits that you are making put back into the business to, to make educated bets essentially on, on long-term things.

Andrew Trotman: And that's very much where Komi has gone over, over the last almost 10 years. It's reinvesting and seeing an opportunity, building out what that, what that revenue stream looks like. And we've gone from from, from where we started with that one Facebook page where we were, I. Trying poorly to sell in branded content to where we are now, where we've got over a hundred different revenue streams and diversification from that starting point has always been on my mind.

Andrew Trotman: And I think is is something which, which, when we launched the creator side of the business, it was the being able to relate to the. The fear and the anxiety that people don't often talk about of having a business with one revenue stream. Mm-hmm. And if you're living on a platform somewhere where you don't own that platform, that's a, that's a scary thought.

Andrew Trotman: Yeah. And so diversification and growing out both our business, but then also growing at creators. Through having done it myself, I think helps. And I can see that, that that struggle and I, and I'd like to think that I could understand some of it as well. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. Well, ma many people were burnt by Facebook to changing their monetization approach a few years ago, weren't they?

Justin Crosby: I mean, bus, huge businesses were relying on income coming from Facebook and that sort of changed literally overnight with no warning. Yeah. So hence wise. Spreading your bets. Right. So tell us about Komi then. You, you, you talked about the creative side of the business, but you also have a licensing side.

Justin Crosby: You also have a channel side. And, and so tell us about your channels first and for foremost, because you've got a number of them and, and tell us not what, how many there are. 'cause I know, well, I know how many you've got, but, but talk us through that and maybe what verticals are in and, and, and how you monetize them.

Andrew Trotman: Yeah, so I mean, we've, we, we've got over 40 of our owned brands within Comy. We've either grown them ourselves or we've made certain ac strategic AC acquisitions over the years as well. And we currently produce the latest number was I. Almost 40,000 pieces of content a year. We currently doing about four and a half billion views every month on our own channels.

Andrew Trotman: And I mean, it, it's all underpinned. And again, going back to my, my early points around data. I'm obsessed with data and obsessed with how you can, you can access that and be able to use that to inform decisions and do things differently to other people. That's always been a massively my ethos of how do we, if the market looks like this, how are we gonna play slightly outside it, because that's our strategic advantage over everyone else.

Andrew Trotman: Mm-hmm. And understanding the data and building out our, our, our data systems, again, from the get go. And building a culture of people who also want to have that creativity. And I guess that entrepreneur spirit of being able to dig into that and understand how to, how to take that and, and grow channels faster and better than other people, I think is, is, is really, really important.

Andrew Trotman: Yeah. And then so within the publishing arm of the business, which is where all of our own channels sit, we started to, to, to look at how do we start to license pieces of everyday content of people walking down the street and filming something interesting. With a, a great video this week of a girl being at her graduation.

Andrew Trotman: I. And her stepdad was there and she'd taken her stepdad's name and was going up to, to graduate. And they announced him this, this incredible moment of, of this daughter coming down and hugging her stepdad. And this incredible moment. I think being, being able to, to, to license pieces of content from these everyday situations and be able to use across our channels and tell people's stories was the.

Andrew Trotman: The really important next step for the business to be able to do, which is where we launched Arc Media, which is our licensing division. So we've licensed almost a hundred thousand piece pieces of content over the last six years. And again, it's part of that ecosystem I guess you could say, and relationship between our own channels.

Andrew Trotman: And being able to access the content on the internet that's there and, and is and such an integral pillar of, of what we all go on and love to, to watch every day. Yeah. 

Justin Crosby: So and are any of your channels, are they all faceless channels? Are they all channels that that feature Amazing different content?

Justin Crosby: 'cause it sounds like you have a really deep catalog of, you know, a content to license and you use those and build your channels based upon those. 

Andrew Trotman: Yeah, very much so. And so we, so again, the, the publisher angle being that they aren't one person who runs or is the face of that channel. Yeah. They are channels that, that people can love and engage with over across different niches where that be gaming or animals or the ones I've mentioned before.

Andrew Trotman: But when it comes to creators and helping creators do, do a very similar thing, the. The crossover is, is is very obvious in terms of running a publisher brand and running a creator who, who wants to be successful from these monetization revenue streams on across the different platforms. 

Justin Crosby: So you have all your channels, you said 40 or so individual channels.

Justin Crosby: And they are, are those channel brands also all multi-platform in their own right as well? So 

Andrew Trotman: they're not all multi-platform. WI would probably say about 70% of them are sometimes, again, the way that we've grown. It made sense for 'em to be multi-channel. Sometimes we were just focusing on different areas and different platforms at the time of, of, of where we wanted to get to.

Andrew Trotman: So it's a real mix. 

Justin Crosby: And you also have a, a talent management side and also side of the business that helps creators. Build and monetize their channels. Tell us about that. 

Andrew Trotman: Yeah, so we launched Komi talent about two and a half years ago, and it was through helping a number of creators create actual contents.

Andrew Trotman: We have a, a studios team who, who film, produce edit content for creators. And we were helping a a, a number of creators and a, a lot of the conversations I was having with them at the time was. It's great that you can help us with our Facebook and our YouTube monetization creating content, which understands what the platforms and what the algorithms actually want.

Andrew Trotman: This is great, but I'm currently using the talent management business over here who are running my branded content partnerships and, and I'm not as happy with them because of X, Y, and Z, and a lot of that comes from. Talent management being quite an older industry that had, that had grown from, from, from talent, from tv from film, but actually social media talent and creators and influencers we call them are actually very different.

Andrew Trotman: And need different things from a talent management business. That's interesting. 

Justin Crosby: So, so you're saying that, that, that the legacy talent management companies perhaps had some practices or approaches that weren't really suitable or appropriate for creators? 

Andrew Trotman: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that ranges from a, from a whole host of things, but I think underpinning that would be if, if you want.

Andrew Trotman: Knowledge and advice and help with, as a, as a, as a creator and influencer on your channel, it's really important that you are speaking to someone who understands those platforms, those algorithms, those issues that we are seeing every day. Mm-hmm. And being able to help them with, with that sort of stuff.

Andrew Trotman: So that was the, that was the bit that underpinned it and our leverage across both our licensing and our publishing teams. But actually there was. There was more to it than that. And it was the, again, it was the conversations that I was having with creative influencers two, two and a half, almost three years ago Now that, that, again, I, I've never worked for anyone else.

Andrew Trotman: So my the way I would, I look at any problem is, well, what makes sense and what's the right way to do something? As opposed to, well, people always do it that way, so it must be the right way. Mm-hmm. And it was, it was just simple things like. Having, having creators, influencers really bought in to the business is just, seems like everybody wins in that situation.

Andrew Trotman: So we will regularly have influencers in our office in Manchester just because they want to hang out with some, some other creators and interested people and who are doing different things. We do weekly one-to-ones with all of our creators. Again, we know this space can be really lonely and is, and it's not easy.

Andrew Trotman: And so it's, it's, it, it's partly the wellbeing side, but it's also partly the strategic. We want to build a channel here as, as an influencer that, well, we need to, to work out what the plans for this are going to be. We need to build you a a content plan. We need to discuss what's working, what's not working, how can we talk to the publishing teams who are seeing this new thing on Instagram that's going over and, and, and be able to link that in.

Andrew Trotman: And then there was also the payment side of things as well, which again. When I looked at the space and saw that that creators were waiting 60, 90 days for payments because there was a talent agency in the middle that was holding onto the money with 30 day payment terms, and there was a brand on the other side of that who were paying the, the, the talent agency who were on 30 day, maybe 60 day terms.

Andrew Trotman: So, so when we launched it was, okay, well if we, if we're working and, and truly partners with creators and influencers, what we'll we will do is we'll have one week payment terms with our influencers, but not, not when the brand pays us, but when the deal is struck and the work is done. So we actually pay out all of our creators on the talent management side before we're ever paid from the brands.

Andrew Trotman: Yeah. Because we backing ourselves and we're backing our influencers and our creators in the work that they're doing and our relationships with the brands. And touch wood, to this day, we haven't been in a dispute with the brand over that. And actually that cash flow issue is one of the most popular things when we're speaking to creators and influencers.

Andrew Trotman: They're able to to, to unlock, which is great. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. And obviously you are, you are right. Identifying the key pain points, which is, you know, which is payment terms, which is. Wellbeing and we'll, we'll maybe talk about that a little bit later, about wellbeing of creators and burnout and all the other issues that that, that they face.

Justin Crosby: So it's very smart that you've, you know, you've actually looking at that as the, as your key differentiator in terms of what you can, you can deliver to them. So let's, let's talk about the platforms. What platforms are you seeing? I mean, obviously. YouTube is the key for monetization, but not, not the only one.

Justin Crosby: I mean, how, what's your outlook in terms of growth going forward in terms of the platforms and which, which, which are you really backing? 

Andrew Trotman: Mm-hmm. It's an interesting conversation because they all have, they all have their pros and cons and I think some of them are underleveraged. I think, again, if you look at the, the.

Andrew Trotman: The cold, hard numbers. If you want the, the biggest platform which reaches the, the, the highest daily active users. And it surprised a lot of people. It's actually Facebook, which does that, it skews an older demographic. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. People have forgotten about Facebook a bit. 

Andrew Trotman: Yeah. Yeah. And it, it's a bit of a, an echo chamber out of the people that we speak to and we're, we tend to be on the younger side of people who don't use Facebook as much, but actually it's still the most popular social platform there is.

Andrew Trotman: So. It's something we certainly don't sleep on. And again, if I, I've been saying for the last 12 months when, when people ask me what is the, the going to be, the next platform to come along, obviously we had, TikTok probably is the most recent breaking into the mainstream, doing more than a billion daily active users.

Andrew Trotman: And that's when it, when it really started going, but. If I was to place a bet, I would actually place a bet on Facebook being the, the next biggest platform, which sounds really strange, but I actually think things work in, in trends and, and popularity. And it's, it's the, the thing people always say, where a platform is, is cool until you're, until your mom's on it.

Andrew Trotman: So that was Facebook, then that was Instagram and then that was TikTok. But the moms are coming for TikTok as well. So I actually think. If you're looking at, at which platform can leverage a new audience to come in, I would actually back Facebook being able to, to be able to entice the, the, the younger the younger audiences in that sort of 10 to 16 in maybe not now, maybe in a few years.

Andrew Trotman: Yeah. And again, but it's an 

Justin Crosby: untapped opportunity for them, right? 

Andrew Trotman: Yeah, absolutely. And, and again, if you want to look at the. The, the ad spend of these platforms, and a lot of it comes down to what are the, the, the, the systems and the advertising platforms or systems on these platforms, I should say, which are the most advanced.

Andrew Trotman: Then Facebook is the most advanced. It gives the best ROI for advertisers to spend their money on. So it makes sense that actually those tools have been built out, built out more than, say, a TikTok, which hasn't been around as long and actually. They haven't been able to build out their advertising software so that advertisers can spend a pound on, on TikTok and, and, and double that, whereas Facebook advertisers know they can do that.

Andrew Trotman: So Facebook is up there and it's a, it's an underutilized one and I think it has more potential to, to, to be used. YouTube, I think is a, is is a great platform. Again, it's not far behind Facebook. But actually, if you were to look at how long does an average user spend on these platforms, which is a really important point, okay, great that they're on there, but are they quickly going on marketplace, on Facebook to do something quickly, but actually not engaged with the video content that's on there?

Andrew Trotman: YouTube is, is, is almost 50 minutes, I think it is, whereas Facebook's 30 minutes. And, and TikTok is clearly. Has been on this, this meteoric rise over the last couple of years. And he's, he's, he's very popular but's having a few setbacks over the last sort of six to 12 months and they're kind of stuttering in their growth.

Justin Crosby: There's a lot of uncertainty around it still isn't there as a platform in terms of, in the US and ownership issues. And 

Andrew Trotman: yeah, there's a lot of uncertainty and I think that's probably stopping brands building out 12 month campaign strategy, not knowing that, oh, well, well maybe I won't be able to do that in two months.

Andrew Trotman: So actually my lower risk bet here is to spend more money with Google and YouTube or, or, or, or Meta. But I think if YouTube is a, is probably, probably the platform, I think. If you, if you weigh everything up in terms of popularity, if you, if you take on how people are u are using that platform, people are now watching it whilst they have their tea on TVs.

Andrew Trotman: I was looking with one of of our creators last week, and out of all his views. I, I was surprised when he showed me this, 54% of his of his views were coming from TV and 20 odd percent from desktop and mobile was actually much, much smaller. Wow. And what sort of creator was, was he then? A large YouTube reactionary creator.

Andrew Trotman: Right. But I, I, I think that's probably a broad trend that we're, that we're seeing across YouTube that people, particularly younger agencies, like to have it on, on, on TVs. And actually, you know, TikTok is a, is a feed scroller where people are waiting for that, for that one and watching it for a much shorter period of time than YouTube where.

Andrew Trotman: You can actually build audiences and go much deeper. 'cause the average watch times of, of pieces of content on YouTube are, are, are, are a lot longer. You can see that with, with podcasts and Mm. If you try and put a podcast 30 minute podcast on TikTok, your your watch times, not, probably not gonna be, too. Yeah. Too exciting. Yeah. Whereas YouTube, you know, people are going to watch something. It's very much a destination platform as opposed to sort of a highway platform. Obviously you're, you're going through and looking for something Yeah. Rather than going out and searching for that. Yeah. So YouTube's a great place for, for long form content where, where people can be really purposeful to go and to go and look and.

Justin Crosby: And they're bringing in that episodic interface as well, aren't they? In terms of it, it is gonna start to look a little bit like Netflix, I think for a lot of reasons. I 

Andrew Trotman: think, and that makes loads of sense, right? Where, where when you see the TV habits and it starts to become more like a, a a a TV network.

Andrew Trotman: I think that makes, makes lots of sense. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. So. Talking about creators and how they're making money off platform, we are seeing a whole number of creators start to, obviously you've got brand deals, but also there's creators starting to create their own real world businesses. And that's, that's something that's, you know, that's really on the on the rise.

Justin Crosby: Where do you see the future of creator load businesses heading? 

Andrew Trotman: Yeah, it's interesting. There's certainly over the last couple of years we've seen some. Some big successes of the, I guess the, the, the offline businesses that, that creative creators have grown, which is, which has been great to sort of watch and witness and, and, and see the growth there.

Andrew Trotman: I think, I think that, I think my opinion on on those are, is they're absolutely great and diversification. I'm a, a, a massive, massive propent of that being incredibly important. I think. I think the, the, I would say there's a, there's a, there's a, a potential pitfall of seeing that as the golden thing to get to.

Andrew Trotman: Mm. But it's very, very different from a, a, a content led business that you've built and you've created a, a, a channel and an audience that really cares. That's, that's, that's superb. And I think that's, that's great. But I think. At the moment, the successes we're seeing tend to be the, the, the mega influencers who have huge audiences that they can then leverage into, into these offline businesses.

Justin Crosby: 'cause they're often licensing deals, aren't they? They're deals that, that, yeah, exactly. And, 

Andrew Trotman: and, and, and again, the, the, the product building products, again, Mr. Beast with his Snackables, like that's a great business and he, and he is got a really strong mission there, but. It's almost got the, the tendency to look really exciting, but actually not see all the pain underneath that it takes to grow an offline business to that size.

Justin Crosby: So especially if you're not in the chocolate market, if you've never started, yeah. Think about making chocolate before. There's a, there's a. Whole world are pain there waiting for you. Right? Yeah. Which, which, which is for any new business outside content creation, you know, whether it's well, any type of business whatsoever, it has all of that, all those struggles that you have to go through.

Justin Crosby: Right. 

Andrew Trotman: And I, and I think there's, again, that's not me saying that they are bad. That's saying that there are so many more levels and layers of diversification that you can do before you have to take that leap if it's something that you want to do. So. Pla. Platform diversification, channel diversification.

Andrew Trotman: The, these are opportunities to diversify your, your, your income as a, as a creator, which are, which are easier and more in the ballpark of being able to. We had one just last week where we launched a new. Channel for a large YouTuber, and it's grown to a hundred thousand subscribers in its first week.

Andrew Trotman: And this is about diversifying away from the, the, the channel that we're doing to have a secondary secondary revenue stream. Mm. And again, I. That's one of, of many different things. And then you can go cross platform. And how have you got different, have you, have you got your licensing covered? Your have you got your your, your, your brand deals?

Andrew Trotman: On a, on a recurring base, like there's so many different things I. And then when you get to the, okay, I've got this great idea and I think my audience really care about this one product, how can I either launch by myself or partner with someone who's, who's done this before and knows the pain underneath to be able to, to, to help create something?

Andrew Trotman: I think that's great and I would love to encourage creators to go do that, but I guess it's just my word of, of warning, of being like, make sure that you've covered off. Everything and being able to grow your business under be underneath. 'cause we're not all Mr. Beasts yet. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah, yeah. Go into it with your eyes open.

Justin Crosby: And I suppose again, coming back to the betting analogy, it's, it's about where you're placing your bets, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So last question, Andrew. Before we come on to Story of the Week and hero of the Week and getting the bin, but in the years, nearly 10 years now since you started Comy Group, what's the biggest lesson?

Justin Crosby: What's the hardest lesson that you've learned and the and perhaps the best lesson that you've learned that you could perhaps give businesses who are working in the digital content space? 

Andrew Trotman: Yeah, I mean. For myself, a again, having done this for 10 years, I can look at the, the younger Andrew now and, and, and say I would've done things differently.

Andrew Trotman: But clearly, perhaps if I hadn't done those, I might have not learned what I was I, that I now know. But I think the, the idea that I, when I started, I. I thought that I had to do everything and dive into every new idea and make sure I was helping lead that, that one project over here and this one project over here.

Andrew Trotman: But actually being able to hire great people over the last couple of years as maybe I was actually you. It's about making the most of what, what you can do yourself and how do you, again, leverage the, the, the bits that I'm really good at and actually. Build a great team around me to be able to do the bits that maybe I'm not so good at or just help manage and be able to, to deliver for all these different clients that we now have.

Andrew Trotman: Mm-hmm. I think is, is really important. And again, I'm a, I love building businesses. I love problem solving. I love seeing a new idea and being able to, to obsess about that one thing over everything else for weeks or months or how, or however long it takes to, to, to build out a solution. But actually. Again, probably three years ago, we, we, we'd gone off in loads of different directions, doing lots of good things, but actually needed to, to focus on, okay, what are we actually building here at Comy?

Andrew Trotman: And that's a digital media business that is building the, the most engaged audiences in the world. How do we do that and build an ecosystem of tools around it. To be able to do that one thing really, really well. And that's across our publishers and our creators and our licenses. But that is essentially what we're doing.

Justin Crosby: And you've got your own bespoke analytics tools, haven't you? Yes. That you use internally, which obviously helps with that. 

Andrew Trotman: Yeah, and I think again, back to that, that back to that data point, the. The really unique bit about working in this space is the amount of data that you can access your yourself without having to go scrape AP APIs, which might turn off tomorrow and ruin your business.

Andrew Trotman: Mm. But actually every, every, every view that you get on a social platform, the. The analytics that actually sit underneath that. And I'm not talking just the, the analytics that you see on a dashboard, but actually when you go into the, the data that you can access from these platforms, every view has hundreds of, of data points on all kinds of different things underneath.

Andrew Trotman: Underneath that. And what we've done over the last two years is. How do we create a data stack using that proprietary database that we've got to be able to go, okay, these views that are coming in on a, on a daily basis, whether that be on our publishing brands or whether that be on our creators, how do we, how do we learn from those and see the trends on, on algorithms, see what's changing on platforms in real time.

Andrew Trotman: That can actually mean that we can drive strategy and drive what type of content we do. How, how long is it gonna be how are people's viewing habits now changing from what they were last week? Because, because Instagram have changed something else. And it's being able to, to react in that, in that, in that live dynamic way to, to change what we're actually doing.

Andrew Trotman: That's, that's what the data bit has been. Getting us to constant 

Justin Crosby: iteration basically. 

Andrew Trotman: Yes, yes, exactly. And be able to see and analyze com different bits of, of audience behaviors is, is always fascinated me. But being able to do that in a, in a dashboard now that we have and play around with things is a, is a, is a really excitement, exciting.

Andrew Trotman: Development. 

Justin Crosby: And is that, that's your proprietary tool, do you, do you license that out to anybody or no? No, we don't. Okay. 

Andrew Trotman: We we like to keep that one to ourselves. Yeah, 

Justin Crosby: I bet you do. Yeah. One last question as well. I'm gonna squeeze in. Yeah. As you were talking clearly made me think about AI and and obviously AI wasn't really around, certainly not in the way that it is now, in terms of tools.

Justin Crosby: When you started your business, how are you utilizing that? Yeah, presumably it's a massive, gonna be a massive part. Definitely obvious this going forward. Yeah, definitely. 

Andrew Trotman: I think, I think that there, there, there's two parts to this 'cause there's the, there's the how are we, how are we leveraging and creating tools to be able to take advantage of ai.

Andrew Trotman: But then there's also the, i a, we did a presentation for the, for the, for the whole team last week and it was, how do we see ai, just on a, on a purely, a lot of people are, there's lots of headlines around taking jobs, et cetera, et cetera. How do we see that and then how are we, how are we going to use that as a business?

Andrew Trotman: I think my fundamental belief is I don't think AI is going to replace businesses, but I do think that businesses that use AI will replace businesses that don't, and I think people who use AI will be more successful than the people who don't use ai. And the, the way we say AI and technology at Komi is how do we give great people great tools to be able to do great work?

Andrew Trotman: And that means if you're, if you're doing something repetitive that could be replaced by, by ai, that then means that you can spend more time being creative and, and, and focusing on the quality of something which, which needs a human to be able to do. So if you look at the. The tools that we are, that, that, that we're creating.

Andrew Trotman: It's all, it's all about that bit there, there in terms of how do we take away the mundane bits from your, from your job 

Justin Crosby: scale and efficiency essentially. Yeah. That's what it's bringing to your business. Exactly. Yeah. And 

Andrew Trotman: it's scale and efficiency that. Means that the, the potential is larger, the, the quality of work is better and we can do more of, of, of that stuff.

Andrew Trotman: It's not about efficiency, which means that it'll then therefore take people's jobs. And I think that's the, that's the, that's the the beauty. And again, I love that side of things. I love seeing the new technology that's coming out, which, as you said. 10 years ago, you can only dream of, of, of doing the things that you can now do a, a, a click of a button.

Andrew Trotman: It's it's incredible. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. Andrew, fantastic. Thank you for telling us about Komi Group and and now it's time for Story of the Week where my guest gets to highlight the content industry news story that's caught their eye in the past seven days. Andrew, what's your story of the week? 

Andrew Trotman: So. I guess mine's not a, a particularly happy, happy one, but it was the, so The Guardian came out this week with a, with a new piece of research on creators and burnout in creators.

Andrew Trotman: And this one, when I read this earlier this week, it, it, it, it really stood out to me. 'cause I, I see, I see this in, in the, in the day to day Komi, and I see the, the risks and the pitfalls, and it was so The Guardian did this, this piece of research along with another agency of, of identifying that. Creators, five out of 10 have say that they have they have, they have felt burnout in whilst being a creator.

Andrew Trotman: And incredibly, four out of 10 creators have felt burnout to the point where they, where they considered stopping. Yeah. That, in, in, in Thailand, I think, again, to my, to my early point, the, the, the being a creator can be really lonely and. The, the people and the tools and the and the, and the connections that you can make out, out, out there I think are really, really important.

Andrew Trotman: And even if that comes down to some of our creators, if they're filming with our studios team of just coming down. And, and being able to work with other people of like-minded people who want to create content, I think is really important. Yeah. We've got a a wellbeing officer at Komi as well.

Andrew Trotman: And again, part of the, the launch of the Komi talent was that every creator. That, that we brought on would have access to that wellbeing officer as well. And 95% of our, of influencers and creators that we have at Komi have used our wellbeing officer. Right. And again, just I think that's, that's really, really important.

Justin Crosby: Well, the average creator doesn't have any formal workplace support, do they? Yeah. And, it's difficult for them to, you know, work life balance. They're, they're chasing the algorithm, right? Yeah. And that's, yeah, I mean, I mean, I, it was interesting 'cause there's another piece of or, or there's another campaign that YouTube started announced a couple of days ago that they want to they're really calling for the government for creators to be recognized, really.

Justin Crosby: And as, as as you know, as valuable contributors to, to, to content industry. It kind of sits a bit strangely with me that because the, they're creating the algorithm, the, their algorithm is rewarding creators for the more and more content that you produce so they can serve more and more ads against it.

Justin Crosby: Yeah. So that, that doesn't quite sit right to me. I dunno. What, what do you think? Yeah, 

Andrew Trotman: it's interesting, isn't it? It's a, I I think it's, I think it's, I think it's hard for creators because it's. I think just being, even being able to, to talk about it with people who maybe understand, 'cause it's a very hard conversation to, to, to speak to Joe Blogs, to, to say.

Andrew Trotman: This is, this is what I'm up against. I'm have, I have this, this overriding anxiety and stress to, to create content at the, at the, the, the cadence that I need to be able to, to stick up with these platforms. Usually the response from, from people is, oh, woe is me. Like, oh, poor, poor creator, poor influencer who, who has to create content for everything.

Andrew Trotman: Yeah. You're 

Justin Crosby: not out there digging roads. Exactly. So what's That's, that's, that's the reaction, isn't 

Andrew Trotman: it? And I think that's that. That adds to the problem. But actually it's the, it's the being able to, to speak about those, those problems and those anxieties with people who are, who wanna listen and understand that, that it's probably a big part of that problem.

Andrew Trotman: Yeah. And, and, and the, the anxiety that that means that, oh, I can't speak about this 'cause I almost kind of feel a bit of a shame. Mm-hmm. A shame to be able to, to, to be able to do this for a living as well. Mm-hmm. So again, I think the. As a lot of these things, the more people talk about, I think, I think the better.

Andrew Trotman: And finding the communities of people, again, getting creators together in in, in spaces or events, I think is, is really important. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah, that's a really good point. Well, well done For, you know, for, for recognizing that issue and, and leading into it and providing those those benefits for, for your clients.

Justin Crosby: How about hero of the Week? Who are you gonna nominate as your hero of the week? Hero of the week. 

Andrew Trotman: I think it, I think it has to go to every person who picks up their phone and films something. Random or that looks like nothing's happening and then catches the best piece of content ever on the internet.

Andrew Trotman: Because if people didn't do that, the, the, the, the pillars of the, the commu, the community and the internet would not exist. So yeah, every, every person who, who's picking up their phone and. And, and filming something random, I think yeah. Would be my hero of the week. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. Yeah. My favorite one was, was the Mount Aetna eruption a couple of weeks ago.

Justin Crosby: And if you saw that, and there was, yeah, there's this pyro plastic flow that came down the side of the mount, which was extraordinary. Yeah. Footage and just literally somebody with a mobile phone, which is that's probably worth a lot of money, that video. Now. Yes. If they're, if they're licensing it in the right way, maybe we, maybe we've got it license.

Justin Crosby: Who knows? Maybe you have all. And who or what are you telling to get in the bin? Finally, Andrew, 

Andrew Trotman: get in the bin. I, I would say TikTok videos with great TikTok videos, great content with text and emojis all over the front of them. And then. The, the people who upload content and then don't save the original file as well.

Andrew Trotman: 'cause it's heartbreaking to have a great piece of content. Yeah. But not be able to use it and tell that person's story because it's got a load of texts over the front of it. 

Justin Crosby: Oh, right. Okay. So busy, busy content Yes. On TikTok. Okay. That can get into bin. Exactly. Andrew, thank you so much for coming on TellyCast.

Justin Crosby: It's been fascinating having you on this. I could talk for a lot, lot longer and delve into all sorts of things around the Comy group, which, which sound really fascinating. But for now, thank you so much for coming up. Thanks, Justin. Well, that's about it for this week's show. TellyCast was produced by Spirit Studios and recorded in London.

Justin Crosby: We'll be back next week with another show. Until then, stay safe.